The English Assassin Read online

  “Time?” Catherine Cornelius stared around the room in search of a clock that was going. There was a black marble one on the mantle, a grandfather in the corner.

  “Nine twenty-six,” said Miss Brunner, referring to the plain silver pendant watch she wore about her neck. “Where are our rooms, my dear? And when shall we expect supper?”

  Catherine passed her hand over her forehead and said vaguely, “Soon. I must apologise. My brother gave me very little warning, I’m afraid. The preparations. Excuse me. I’m sorry.” And she left the room, hearing Miss Brunner say, “Well, it’s a change from Calcutta.”

  * * *

  Catherine found Mary Greasby, the maid-of-all-work, in the kitchen enjoying a glass of madeira with cook. Catherine gave instructions for beds and supper to be prepared. These instructions were received with poor grace by the servants. She returned to the drawing room with a tray on which were glasses and decanters of whisky, sherry and what remained of the madeira.

  Mr Smiles stood with his back to the grate. The fire now blazed merrily. “Ah, splendid,” he said, stepping forward and taking the tray from her. “You must forgive our manners, dear lady. We have been travelling in a rough-and-ready way in some rather remote parts of the world. Just the thing. We were reluctant to impose, but—well, fugitives, you know, fugitives. Ha ha!” He poured whiskies for all save Catherine who raised her hand to decline.

  “How is your dear brother, Miss Cornelius?” The redheaded woman’s tone was patronising. “We have missed him so much while we have been abroad.”

  “He is well, I think,” replied Catherine. “I thank you.”

  “You are very alike. Are they not, Mr Smiles?”

  “Very.”

  “So I believe,” said Catherine.

  “Very alike.” Reflectively Miss Brunner lowered her eyelids and sipped her drink. Catherine shivered and sat down on a hard chair near the piano.

  “And how is old Frank?” said Mr Smiles. “Eh? We’ve had some exciting times together, he and I. How is he?”

  “I am sorry to say I have not seen him recently, Mr Smiles. He writes to Mother. The occasional postcard, you know.”

  “Like me, young Frank. Bit of a globetrotter.”

  “Yes.”

  Prinz Lobkowitz rose. “I must be going, Catherine. It isn’t very wise for me to stay here, considering the opinion the police hold of me at the moment. Perhaps we’ll meet at the conference.”

  “Shall you find a cab at this time of night? If you would care to stay—”

  “I dare say I’ll find one. It’s a long way back to Stepney. But I thank you for the offer.” He bowed to Miss Brunner and kissed her hand. He shook hands with Mr Smiles. “Goodbye. I hope your stay is peaceful.” He laughed. “For you if not for them!” Catherine helped him on with his old-fashioned Armenian cloak and saw him to the front door. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Keep your spirits up, petite Katerina. We are sorry to make use of your house like this, but there wasn’t much choice. Your brother—give him my regards. We’ll probably meet soon, tell him. In Berlin, perhaps. Or at the conference?”

  “I think not the conference.” Catherine hugged him. “Be careful, my dear, my own dear Prinz Lobkowitz.”

  He opened the door and drew his muffler about his mouth and chin as the fog surged in. He fitted his tall hat on his head. There came the sound of horses’ hoofs on the road outside. “A cab.” Gently he squeezed her arm and then ran into the cold darkness. Catherine closed the door and started as the maid spoke from where she stood halfway up the stairs.

  “Is it just the three of you now, mum?”

  Miss Brunner appeared in the drawing-room doorway. Her face seemed flushed, perhaps by the alcohol. She offered Catherine a look of considerable intimacy. “Oh, I think so,” she said, “don’t you?” She smoothed her red hair back, then she smoothed her straight flannel skirt over her thighs and pelvis. She stretched out and took Catherine’s hand leading her back into the room. Mr Smiles stood by the piano glancing through a Mozart sonata.

  “Do you play, Miss Cornelius?”

  REMINISCENCE (C)

  Someone singing.

  LATE NEWS

  Two young boys who disappeared from Ballinkinrain approved school near Balfron, Stirlingshire, a month ago were found dead last night at the bottom of a gorge in the Fintry Hills, two miles from the school. The bodies of John Mulver, aged 10, of Balornock, Glasgow, and Ian Finlay, aged 9, of Raploch, Stirling, were found by a search party of police and civilians who have been combing the area for the past month.

  Guardian, 13 April, 1970

  Two boys aged 15 and 9 were killed in Dacca today in the latest of a series of bombing incidents. A home-made bomb buried under rubbish in front of Pakistan’s council building exploded. A man who was injured was seen riding frantically from the scene on his bicycle.

  Guardian, 12 May, 1970

  A three-year-old boy found dead in a disused refrigerator in the garden of his home in Somerset was yesterday named as Peter Wilson, of Hillside Gardens, Yatton. It is understood the refrigerator was self-locking. Eight weeks ago three-year-old twins, Lynn and Caroline Woods, died of suffocation in a disused refrigerator in their home at Farley, near Thames Ditton.

  Guardian, 2 June, 1970

  Paul Monks, aged 14, was found dead yesterday after an explosion in a wood near his home at High Street, Dawick, near Buckingham. The boy was seen on Sunday night with what appeared to be an unexploded mortar bomb.

  Guardian, 2 June, 1970

  Four people were killed and six injured when a van and two cars collided at Wroot, Lincolnshire, yesterday. Two of the dead were children.

  Guardian, 29 June, 1970

  An inquest was opened yesterday into the death at Eton of Martin Earnshaw, aged 14, son of Lady Tyneford and Mr Christopher Earnshaw. The boy was found hanging in his room at the school in the morning … Mr Anthony Chenevix-Trench, headmaster of Eton, had said earlier that Martin was extremely popular. “During the last few days he had been sent three times to me to be commended for his good efforts. We cannot account for this tragedy.”

  Guardian, 6 December, 1969

  THE ALTERNATIVE APOCALYPSE 3

  Jerry turned the corner from Elgin Crescent into Ladbroke Grove. He saw that the rag-pickers were still out. They had been working through the night, using stolen hurricane lamps, shuffling in and out of the huge banks of garbage lining both sides of the street. Here and there among the plastic bags and the piles of cans a discreet fire was smouldering.

  Jerry made his way down the centre of the road, listening to the sly sounds, the secret scufflings of the people of the heaps, until at last he reached the corner of Blenheim Crescent and realised with a shock that the Convent of the Poor Clares was down. His headquarters lay in ruins. The walls had been demolished, as had most of the buildings. Bricks and rubble had been cleared neatly into piles, but for some reason a few of the trees had been preserved, protected by new white fences—an oak and two black, twisted, stunted elms. The rest of the trees had been sawn down and stacked in a pile in the centre of the site. The best part of the original chapel and the administration wing attached to it, on the Westbourne Park Road side, were still standing. The machinery of demolition was parked here and there: trucks and earth-movers cloaked in dark canvas glistening with drizzle. Jerry climbed over the rubble and plodded through the thick mud until he stood under the nearest elm. He reached up and touched the lowest of the gnarled branches; he kicked at the stake fence. It quivered. He stumbled up a pile of bricks and masonry and got through a gap in the chapel wall. Fragments of stained glass clung to lead frames. The pews had been torn up and scattered, the altar had been ripped out, the electrical wiring had been pulled down and everything was covered with plaster and white dust. High up, the light fell through the ruined roof onto a crude painting of the Resurrection, its lurid greens, yellows and reds already faded by the action of the rain and the wind. On all the walls were
patches the size and shape of the devotional pictures which had hung there. He walked into the administration wing; the first two floors of this had hardly been touched as yet. He noticed small piles of human shit in some of the empty rooms. In the Mother Superior’s office, which had been his office, too, he saw the white outline of the big cross which had hung there when he had last visited the convent. All furnishings, with the exception of two sodden mattresses in one room, had been carried off; his friends, his employees, his pets had gone.

  As the light improved he moved through the wreckage, picking up small things. A triangle of green stained glass, a fragment of wood from a pew, the bulb holder from a light fixture, a hook on which the nuns had once hung their habits, a key from a cupboard, a 1959 penny left on the floor of the chapel, a nail which had secured part of the large cross to the wall. He put them in the pockets of his black car coat. A few relics.

  Then he climbed out the way he had come, trudging back to the road and noticing that his heavy Frye boots were coated with mud and shit.

  On the other side of the garbage heap he heard the note of a taxi’s engine. He clambered quickly over the refuse, waving urgently at the cab. Rather reluctantly it stopped and let him get in.

  The airport, he said.

  As he had often suspected, the end had come quietly and the breakdown had been by slow degrees. In fact the breakdown was still going on. Superficially there was nothing urgent about it. As the weeks passed and communications and services slowly worsened, there always seemed to be a chance that things might improve. He knew they could not improve.

  He remembered his old friend Professor Hira (who now sometimes called himself ‘Hythloday’) escorting him through the chaos of Calcutta and saying, There is order in all this, though it’s not as detailed as we’re used to, I suppose. All human affairs can be seen as following certain basic patterns. The breakdown of a previous kind of social order does not mean that society itself has broken down—it is merely following different forms of order. The ritual remains.

  The cab-driver glanced nervously at the rag-pickers. Some of them seemed to be eyeing the taxi as though it were an especially fine piece of carrion. The driver speeded up as much as he dared, for there was only room for a single line of traffic on what was still, officially, a two-way road.

  Jerry stared reflectively at the shit on his boots.

  THE ALTERNATIVE APOCALYPSE 4

  You got to believe in something. You can’t get excited about nothing, Colonel Cornelius, said Shakey Mo.

  The four of them were squeezed into the cabin of a 1917 Austin-Putilov half-tracked armoured car. Beesley was driving while Cornelius, Shakey Mo Collier and Karen von Krupp manned the machine guns. The car was travelling slowly over the stony countryside of West Cornwall. In the distance a farmhouse was burning. They were trying to reach St Michael’s Mount, a fortified islet about ten miles down the South Coast, opposite the town of Marazion. Beesley believed he would find friends there.

  Cornelius tried to make himself more comfortable on the pressed-steel saddle seat, but failed. They went over a bump and everyone clung on to the handgrips. It was very hot inside the half-track, even though they had lifted up the lid of the conning tower for ventilation. The original crews had worn gasmasks.

  You’re probably right, said Cornelius.

  He saw a few figures, armed with rifles, move along the crest of the hill where the farmhouse burned. They didn’t seem to offer a threat, but he kept his eye on them. His machine gun was inclined to jam. He took out his Smith and Wesson .45 revolver, retrieved, like the rest of their equipment, from the Imperial War Museum, and checked it over. There was nothing wrong with that.

  He was worrying about his wife and children. It was years since he had last remembered them: There was a list in his mind:

  One Woman

  One Boy

  One Girl

  A woman had recently slashed her wrists in Ladbroke Grove after gassing her little boy and girl. All were dead. There was no reason why it should be his particular relatives. But there had been something about a Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence record on the gramophone and it seemed to him to be a clue to something even more familiar. He wiped the grime and the sweat from his face and glanced across the cabin to the opposite position. Karen von Krupp, her skirt hitched up, straddled her seat looking at him, her back to her gun. She was so old. He admired her stamina.

  Whoever suggested the Highlands as a safe retreat was a fool, said Bishop Beesley, not for the first time. Those Scotchmen are barbarians. I said the Scilly Isles was a better bet and now we’ve wasted three months and nearly lost our lives a dozen times over.

  The half-track droned on.

  I think I can see the sea, said Karen von Krupp.

  Jerry wondered how he had come to throw in with these three.

  It’s getting dark, said Mo Collier. He climbed out of his seat and stretched, making the stick-bombs at his belt rattle. What about making camp?

  Let’s wait until we reach the coast road, if it’s still there, said Bishop Beesley. He looked over his shoulder, straight into Jerry’s eyes. He smirked. Now what’s wrong with you? Can guilt be anything more than a literary conceit, Mr Cornelius? He uttered a suggestive chuckle. What truly evil person ever feels guilty? You might almost argue that evil-doing is an honest reaction against that sham we call ‘guilt’. Repentance is, of course, a rather different kettle of fish. He returned his attention to his steering.

  Jerry considered shooting him and then seeing what happened to the half-track without a driver. The bishop was always transferring his own problems onto others and Jerry seemed his favourite target.

  Speak for yourself, he said. I’ve never understood you, Bishop Beesley.

  Mo sniffed. You sound as bored as me, colonel. I could do with some action, I don’t know about you.

  It’s freezing. Karen von Krupp drew up the collar of her dirty sheepskin jacket. Could we have the tower closed now?

  No, said Bishop Beesley. It would be suicide with our exhaust in the condition it is.

  Karen von Krupp said sulkily: I’m not sure I believe you.

  Anyway, it’s still quite warm. Shakey Mo was conciliatory. Chin up, Frau Doktor. He grinned to himself and began to move his machine gun about in its slit. Brrrrr. Brrrrr. We might just as well’ve come on bikes, the chances we’ve had to use these.

  Portsmouth wasn’t enough for you, eh? said Karen von Krupp bitterly.

  Mine was the only bloody gun working, Collier pointed out. I maintain my equipment. All the others jammed after a couple of bursts.

  We were nearly killed, she said. She glanced accusingly at Jerry. I thought that Field Marshal Nye was a friend of yours.

  Jerry shrugged. He’s got his duty to do just like me.

  Law and Order freak, explained Collier, lighting a Players. Groovy. I wish we had some music.

  An explosion rocked the car and the engine whined miserably.

  Bloody hell! yelled Collier in relief. Mines!

  LATE NEWS

  A 14-year-old boy died after falling 60ft from the roof of a block of shops near his home in Liverpool on Saturday night. He was William Brown of Shamrock Road, Port Sunlight.

  Guardian, 29 December, 1969

  A boy of 13 was remanded in custody until February 16 at Ormskirk, Lancashire, yesterday accused of the murder of Julie Mary Bradshaw, aged 10, of Skelmersdale. The girl’s body was found on Monday night in the loft of a house.

  Guardian, 11 February, 1969

  A boy aged 12 found murdered on a golf course at Bristol yesterday was killed by four or five savage blows on the head it was said after a post mortem last night. The blows could have been made with a tree branch, said police. Martin Thorpe, of Rye Road, Fulton, had gone to Shirehampton golf course to search for golf balls.

  Guardian, 2 April, 1970

  A schoolgirl was killed and five other children and three adults wounded when Arab guerillas fired Russian-made Katyusha rockets in
to the Northern Israeli town of Beison yesterday. Three of the rockets fell in the playground of the school. Two of the injured children were in a serious condition.

  Guardian, 2 April, 1970

  Schoolboy Michael Kenan, aged 12, was drowned in a reservoir at Durford, near Chelmsford, Essex, yesterday while bird nesting with friends.

  Daily Express, 8 June, 1970

  Police tightened security in Warsaw yesterday as a curfew was again clamped on the port of Szezecin, the scene of violent street fighting on Thursday … A Swedish radio reporter, Mr Anders Tunborg, said, “The tanks repeatedly charged the crowds who sprang out of the way to avoid being run down. A mother and her young daughter did not get out of the way in time and an onrushing tank hit them both. A young soldier stood watching nearby and crying.”

  Scotsman, 19 December, 1970

  REMINISCENCE (D)

  You are killing your children.

  THE LOVERS

  With her chemise pulled up to her navel, Una Persson pressed her slim self to Catherine Cornelius who lay beneath her. Catherine’s clothes were neatly folded on the stool near the dressing table. Una Persson’s summer shirtwaist frock, stockings, drawers and corsets were scattered on the carpet. The bedroom needed painting. It was a bright summer afternoon. Sunlight crept through the tattered net and the dusty glass of the windows.

  With passion Una said:

  “My own dear love. My darling sweet.”

  And Catherine replied:

  “Dear, dear Una.”

  She arched her perfect back, quivering. Grasping her buttocks, Una kissed her roundly in the mouth.

  “Love!”

  Una gave a long, delicious grunt.

  “Oh!”

  “Una! Una!”